Eye of the Beholder
by The.Unaccounted.Tragedy
Summary: Oneshot Slight NatxKitty, maybe some unintentional PtolmeyxBart, but a quick story about Bartimaeus, humans, and that troublesome little thing called love. R&R please: formerly called 'Love' before I decided that was a stupid title


**Just a fun little oneshot, after this I suppose I should finish Time and Essence (which I really don't want to do) then I have one more original idea for a story in this genre. Enjoy! (I have **_**got**_** to stop this NatxKitty trip so I made one Ptolmey-centric-ish)**

It had been a simple question, if maybe a little too simple. I remembered the day clearly: a warm Egyptian day, the blaring sun casting a yellow glow around the white marble of the library. Ptlomey had his nose buried in some papyrus, and I was in my usual form of the sea bird. Suddenly, he had looked up and out the window, his head propped up on one hand as he gazed out on the commoners in the market place, the sun burned and the mayflies buzzed around them.

"Rekhyt." He started. "Aren't they _so cute?"_

"What the bugs?" I asked. "Would be a lot cuter if they weren't carrying disease, I suppose, but sure, they're cute."

"Not the bugs, my friend," He rolled his dark eyes. _"Them_." He said, pointing disctreetly at a couple, a dark skinned boy and a long haired girl, hand in hand, strutting down the street, stars in eyes.

"Oh, those two?" I scrunched up my beady eyes. "Nothing too special, I guess, although look at his nose…its _huge._" And it was.

"Not like that ." Ptolmey said. "They're obviously in love," He said.

"Oh yes, love." I said. "Sure, I guess." Doey eyes, starry auras, hand in hand, with a foolish expression on their faces; you could call that love.

"Its kind of sweet…" The boy said, almost wistfully.

"Sweet?" I repeated. "I must object, I find them…kind of dopey."

"Rekhyt, don't be so harsh," He reprimanded me. "I think its lovely for two people to enjoy each others company so much,. For two people, completely unrelated, to meet each other and feel such deep emotion for each other…" Even he was getting a bit soft eyed, while I just rolled my own.

"Love, friendship, whatever." I said, yawning deeply.

"What?" The boy asked. "You feel no such emotion to any other being?"

"Do y_ou_?"

"Well, yes." He said. "I have friends, and I do feel a certain kind of love for them" He said, looking at me. I ruffled my feathers slightly.

"But someone I think those two are a bit more than friends, if you catch my drift." I said, trying to make a suggestive gesture with my wing. Which forced me to be a bit creative. "Anyone like that in _your_ life?"

"Well…" Ptolmey stalled. I smirked. From my time with the boy, I had pretty much realized that even if he had known what a girl was, chances are, moment he met one he would start running in the other direction. "Well what about you Rekhyt?"

Now it was my turn to pause. Certainly I had never felt a romantic kind of love, after all such affairs with demons were rare and far between and usually ended messily. "Well, I suppose I could think of some spirits I have some comradery for…" When it was in my best interests, naturally. "You humans have such messy relationships what with this 'love' thing…"

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"I mean all the effort, the conflict, the worry…" I mused. "It always ends in disaster, I can't see why you insist on getting so involved with each other."

"But you forget my friend," He said. "The joy, the trust, and the light heartedness that any love can bring: friendship, family, romance..."

"Romance? Like those two saps?" I said, looking at the gooey couple. I rolled my large yellow eye. The way they gooned and doted over each other, sitting on a stone bench, was downright sickening. "That's not romance."

"Oh?"

"That's _spectacle." _I corrected the boy. "This 'romance' is nothing more than hormone crazed kiddies buying into all this grown up slop. Simply playing house."

"Well certainly, they are young…"

"Look at them! Barely out of the cradle!" I cried as the pair stopped and the man opened a box he had drawn from him robes with great cerimony. The girl gasped and pulled out a jade necklace with great ceremony.

"There." The boy said triumphantly.

"What? The bauble?"

"He wouldn't of spent time and effort knowing what she likes, then wasted money buying it if he didn't love her." Ptomley folded his arms with finality.

"Oh please." I said. "Any oaf can go and pick up something sparkly to entice."

"And look," He replied, shoving his hand in their direction. "Look at that."

I stared. "She appears to be feeding off of his nose…"

"No!" He cried. "They are _kissing_. One only kisses someone they love."

"A kiss?" I said incredulously. "Dime a dozen, would you like one right now?" I said, giving him the best kissy lips a beak could muster

"No thank you." He quipped, tossing down his brush in frustration. "You seem to know so much about us humans, than tell me, my friend, what is love?"

"Erm-" He got me. Might as well have asked a blind man to describe the color blue.

"You seem to know much about what it _isn't_," He started, gloating in my discomfort. "And what _pain_ and _mess_ it brings," He goaded. "Is there nothing to prove, to say, a true love?"

"Hm." I thought for a second, the pause feeling like an eternity of pondering. "I believe love is in the eyes."

"Eyes?" The boy repeated. "The gateway to the soul?"

"The soft, open eyes only a lover can show," I said, mulling it over, then nodding. "The stolen glances from bashful eyes, the fluttering looks of a secret crush, and the tearing eyes from a heart that has truly been broken." The boy paused, meditating on my words.

"Do you believe that, Rekhyt?" He finally said slowly.

"Pffft, Of course not." I said, spreading my wings in a stretch. "Now, what was that earlier about elemental spirits?"

-*-

It seemed odd, needing someone else to prove to you, what you had said in the first place.

Maybe it had been all her talk of Ptolmey. Maybe it had been our essences fusing together that had jolted this memory. But either way, oh dear me, I had been right. Terribly right.

"Kitty…you're beautiful!" He exclaimed.

"Oh really, just now?"

Oh dear. Oh dear indeed. There it was. The glint, the shimmer, then undeniable spark. They were in _love_. _Love_ of all things! How classic too: the troubled, stony boy; the fiery, clever girl. And there it was. Gag.

No trinkets, no cheesy songs, no awkward, wet, and unpracticed smooches, not even a single date (unless you could call kidnapping and potential murder a date. Classic.). It just was, as natural as the dawn. And Ptolmey had been right about it. It was _so cute. _


End file.
